Jeongseon Arirang

Unknown (Jeongseon Oral Tradition)

Region

Jeongseon

Genre

Gangwon Folk Song

Usage

Recreational Song

Jeongseon Arirang carries the steep mountains of Jeongseon, Gangwon-do, and the lives of the people who lived among them, in a slow, unhurried melody with sorrowful, yearning lyrics. Some 3,000 verses have been handed down, as mountain villagers poured every moment of their lives into this song. This record is archive material collected to organize and preserve the representative lyrics and the transmission context of Jeongseon Arirang.

Commentary & Notes

Black clouds over Mount Mansu: Mount Mansu stood in Songdo, the capital of the Goryeo dynasty. The gathering storm clouds are said to stand for the dynasty's fall.

Auraji and dongbaek: Auraji is the ferry crossing in Jeongseon where two rivers, the Golji and the Song, flow together. In Gangwon dialect, "dongbaek" means not the camellia but the spicebush tree, which blooms yellow in early spring.

Singers pack the long verses tightly into the melody, then release a single high, sustained line on the refrain "Arirang, arirang, arariyo."

Cultural Background

Jeongseon Arirang holds the isolation of life deep in the mountains, the hardships of farming steep land, and an optimism that never gave way. Men sang it while dancing with their A-frame carriers to forget the strain of farm work, and women sang it to ease long hours of weaving and field labor. Today it lives on at every Jeongseon market day in performances by the county's arirang troupe.